This current iteration of Action Comics will only run three volumes; with the fourth, the collections numbering will start over for DC’s “Superman Superstars” anthology initiative in the title. But Superman: Action Comics Vol. 2: To Hell and Back starts the end early, collecting only the backup stories from the final issues of Action, plus a couple of specials.
I’d have been disappointed, indeed, if DC had not collected these backups, so I’m more happy to have them than not. At the same time, none of them are great, a few perhaps suffering from new-to-DC writers penning these characters for the first time. So while again I’m glad to have the collection, it’s not particularly satisfying — lacking, specifically, for Superman himself — and only makes the wait from September 2024 when this was published to February 2025 for the next collection of Action that much longer.
[Review contains spoilers]
Among my favorites in To Hell’s melange is the two-part New Super-Man story, “Secret Identity,” by the New Super-Man title team of Gene Luen Yang and Victor Bogdanovic. (It goes without saying that the best use of backups is to put writers and artists of cancelled series back with their characters.) As with the New Super-Man series itself, Yang’s “Secret Identity” succeeds in being silly and wacky and then unexpectedly heartfelt.
[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]
We knew New Super-Man Kong Kenan was hanging out with the Super-family now and Bat-Man of China Wang Baixi was over with Batman Incorporated — but what we didn’t know was there was a falling out, and that falling out has to do with Baixi trying to solve a mystery involving Superman’s identity and Kenan preventing him from doing so else Baixi trips Lex Luthor’s psychic bomb (see Superman: Kal-El Returns). It’s excellent pathos on Yang’s part — Kenan loves his friend so much he’s willing to lose him to save him — and Bogdanovic perfectly depicts the loneliness on Kenan’s face in the end, welcomed by the Super-team but effectively exiled from the Justice League of China.
Action Comics writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Knight Terrors two-parter is also effective in its horror movie vibe, but others here are less distinguished. Obviously Greg Hahn’s story of Bibbo with the Super-Twins is all in good fun (and with an Ambush Bug parade balloon!), though I couldn’t get over that no one recognizes the two kids run amok given they’re specifically wearing their super-outfits. It would be a disservice to gauge Magdalene Visaggio’s Superboy story based on what we know was intended as just the first chapter, but I thought Conner gave Ma Kent some attitude that seemed out of character (points for '90s DC and cartoon Young Justice references, though).
Dan Parent, of Archie fame, pens a romance story for Jon Kent and Jay Nakamura — just a couple trying to find time together, no super-villains — which is unusual among DC’s offerings and therefore notable. I also continue to enjoy the bright choices when artist Marguerite Sauvage colors herself, as in Parent's story. But Parent has Jon make a particularly biting comment to Lois about his childhood imprisonment that’s maybe true-to-life but seems awful cruel, and then there’s a Steelworks server that crashes and erases two days worth of work because apparently Steelworks computers don’t have backups. Elements like these, similar to the Super-Twins story, reinforce to me the plain fact that these good writers who simply haven’t done a lot in this franchise.
Leading off the book, and likely what the “Hell” in the volume title refers to, is Dan Watters' Action Comics Presents: Doomsday Special. I was not near as impressed, sadly, as I was with Watters' scary Knight Terrors: Detective Comics story; it’s fun to see Supergirl and the Martian Manhunter team up a la the Supergirl TV series, but I’ve never been much fan of Doomsday with a personality, jumping the shark from a behemoth that Superman fights across the country to a mythological being trying to take over hell. It’s picky, but for the narration throughout, letterer Dave Sharpe uses a thin, tilted font, colored white on red by Adriano Lucas, and I found it consistently hard to read. Even for a hellscape, artists Eddy Barrows and Eber Ferreira were inked too dark; in all, the exciting premise of Supergirl and Martian Manhunter fighting Doomsday in hell ends up a thin, muddled slugfest without much content.
Of course I’m pleased to see DC renew their IP with Bloodwynd1 and I’m pleased to know we’ll be seeing him more in the future; having Bloodwynd in the Justice League again sure would be a kick. I wasn’t particularly more moved by Watters' second Bloodwynd-centric story than his first, however; artist Max Raynor draws in the DC house style such that I didn’t find the story visually impressive, nor do I find Bloodwynd’s new, plainer costume an improvement on his old busier one (thigh pouches for the win). We’ll have to see what happens to him from here.
Ultimately I’d like to hope if DC sees something as good enough to publish, they see it as good enough to collect. Superman: Action Comics Vol. 2: To Hell and Back has the Doomsday Special in it, for instance, but there’s a recent Supergirl Special by Mariko Tamaki not yet slated for a collection, and don’t even get me started on the Dawn of DC Primer. Which is to say, again, very little of this book seems ready for primetime, but I’m glad DC published it nonetheless.
[Includes selection of covers, cover sketches]
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“Blood” “wind.” If there was ever a 1990s name for a superhero, Bloodwynd is it. ↩︎
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